#52Women52Weeks: Donna Zuckerberg uses Greek tragedy & comedy to better understand modern day relationships

Donna Zuckerberg is the Editor-in-Chief of Eidolon, an online publication for informal classical scholarship. She received her PhD in Classics from Princeton in 2014. Her first book, Not All Dead White Men, is under contract with Harvard University Press.

1) When did you first realize you were a classicist?

That's a difficult question, because it depends on your definition of "classicist": is a classicist anybody who's extremely knowledgeable about ancient Greece and Rome, or only those who study those cultures professionally? I believe the former, which is why I'm involved with the Legion Project, an effort to locate and celebrate classicists working outside of academia. My own path wasn't the (increasingly rare) direct one from doctorate to postdoctorate fellowship to tenure-track position; for about six months after I finished my PhD, I considered other professional options (including training to become a pastry chef) before deciding to follow my training as a classicist and start Eidolon.

2) How does the study of Classics lead to a better understanding of human relationships?

All great literature, from all periods, helps us understand human nature and human relationships. This is just one example, but my dissertation was about Greek tragedy and comedy, and those texts - especially the tragedies - have great insight into human relationships. Most tragedies feature at least one character who has been pushed to the absolute limit of what they were capable of bearing and then either rises to the occasion or cracks under the pressure. Euripides, especially, has a great sensitivity for how crises affect relationships between siblings, parents and children, and romantic partners. 

3) What sort of Modern Day-meets-Classical studies essays can be found on Eidolon? Do you have a favorite?

We launched Eidolon in April 2015 with three articles. "Aeneas in Palestine" by Michael Fontaine, was a comparison between the Aeneid and the conflict between Israel and Palestine; "Hungry Eyes" by Curtis Dozier was about an image of Medusa on the back cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; and "Not All Tragedians," by me, was about the challenges of writing feminist scholarship about misogynistic writers. More by accident than design, the themes in those three pieces have continued to form the bulk of our content: comparisons, especially political ones; the intersections of classics and pop culture; humorous and light approaches to the ancient world; feminism; personal essays about the discipline of Classics. We've also published a number of fascinating pieces on the culture of spoken Latin, like "The Latin Speakers of West Virginia" by John Byron Kuhner, and some about pedagogy, like "Teaching Latin to Humans" by Justin Slocum Bailey and "Giving It Up in the Classroom" by Lisl Walsh.

I couldn't possibly pick a favorite of the nearly 200 articles we've published - there are so many articles on there that I love, and I wouldn't want to offend anyone by leaving something out! But I will say that I have a soft spot for articles where you can tell that there's something really important at stake for the writer - articles that combine the best elements of scholarly argumentation and personal meditation. A few that come to mind are "Barbarians Inside the Gate" (part I, part II), Dan-el Padilla Peralta's boundary-shattering exploration anti-immigration sentiment in ancient Rome and Trump's America; "Making a Monster," Sarah Scullin's pensive, measured take on how we should read the scholarship of Holt Parker, a respected and influential scholar of ancient sexuality, in light of his arrest last year for possession and distribution of child pornography; and "On Not Knowing (Modern) Greek," Johanna Hanink's plea to classicists to consider Greek a language at least as useful to learn as French and German.

4) Your forthcoming book Not All Dead White Men is a study of the reception of Classics in Red Pill communities. How are Classics being misinterpreted today? Why is this harmful to their legacy?  

There's much more discussion of ancient Greece and Rome in various Red Pill groups - the Men's Rights Activists, the so-called "alt-right," the "manosphere," the pickup artist community, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), etc. - than I ever expected. Some of them do misinterpret the Classics; pickup artists who claim Ovid was the first PUA tend to read his work very superficially, for example. But more often these men don't precisely misinterpret the Classics so much as they use their cultural capital to lend weight to misogynistic and racist ideas. You can see that particularly in their embrace of Stoicism, which is all over the manosphere. Stoicism is actually a wonderful and very healthy philosophy, but not when it's being used to reinforce the inherent "superiority" of white men over those they consider emotional and irrational, including women and people of color.

5) You recently penned an article for Medium after experiencing online vitriol from your writing. What advice do you give to other writers—and their friends—when faced with reader backlash?

The best advice I can give to other writers is to figure out what you need. If you need to stop hearing the abuse, there's no shame in taking a break from writing and social media. If you decide that you want to continue writing and/or using social media but that you need support from friends and family, seek it out (and make liberal use of Twitter's block and mute functions). If you need to write a rant, then do so - although I'd advise figuring out carefully who you want to rant to. If you need to contact the police because you're concerned about your safety, do so. Most important, don't let them compromise your grip on reality. It's deeply confusing to have people tell you that you deserve to have hatred and vitriol spewed at you because you expressed an opinion, or to see them respond to an ironic tweet with death threats and then to be mocked for taking those death threats non-ironically. The toxic mix of double standards, false equivalences, and gaslighting can make you doubt your own sanity. But if you wait a few days and re-read what you wrote, I promise: you weren't the insane one.

As for writer's friends: just remember that your friend needs your support. Try not to make it all about you. I mention this in the article, but the "comfort in, dump out" rule is always worth keeping in mind.

Read more about Donna Zuckerberg HERE

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